


Kangaroo Court

by Bewscuttles



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Courtroom Drama, F/F, F/M, Gen, Legal Drama, M/M, Soul Selling, Women Are Scary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-08-13 06:26:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7966006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bewscuttles/pseuds/Bewscuttles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Dragonborn is dead. But instead of a nice little dirt nap, he's found himself on the stand for his dealings in life — and his soul's on the line, to be given to whomever proves their claim best. His legal team? A madman. The judge? Severely biased. The jury? Those he murdered.</p><p>This is what happens when you promise your soul to seventeen Daedric Princes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. UNFORTUNATELY

**I.**

And so it came about that one day, Eustace Ovidius—called Dragonborn, among a number of useless titles—passed away in his sleep at the tender age of thirty-four, three nights before his thirty-fifth birthday. The man himself knew this because he stood just a foot away from his corpse, grimacing as he watched rigor mortis set in.

Well, _passed away_ was too delicate a euphemism. It was more like a bloody pain in the neck—or rather, his murderer, deciding to be funny about it, had given him a permanent pain in the neck. An absolutely dreadful business: his skin grey-tinted, blood-speckled, his manicured hands painted a wicked scarlet, a tight, fruitless grip on his neck, and a thickening trickle of blood oozing from the gash into a puddle, staining his sheets. It was this last thing that grated his nerves the most. Those bedsheets had cost a significant amount of coin, and now they were going to be thrown away. The waste.

"I should have anticipated this," he sighed to himself, or to his ghost; he wasn't too sure of things at the moment. He was apparently still wearing his night gown and overrobe, as his corpse was, but he was a tinge bluer, a little too phased through. His feet didn't touch the ground. Instead he bobbed gently in the air, like a kite caught aloft.

"That's what they all say," said a cheerful brogue from behind him.

Eustace had to restrain himself from grabbing a vase and throwing it. He also had to remind himself that he was dead, surprisingly, and that touching things was out of the question. He tensed and then exhaled.

"Wonderful," sighed Eustace. He'd always been a chronic sigher in life, but in death it was positively terminal. Each word was punctuated by a cynical puff of air. "Fantastic. Brilliant. Of course! Of course you're here, of course you are. I'm mad as a cat, aren't I? Simply bloody brilliant."

His whole life Eustace had paid homage to proper Imperial order, deference to the heirarchy, and accepting the natural way of things. He'd even been an accountant for several bigwigs in the military prior the chaotic mess that had been his time in Skyrim. So of course in his next life he was to serve the Daedric Prince of Madness and Mania, the very antithesis to his carefully plotted life. Because, in the end, he'd gone on to become Dragonborn of all things, and wasn't that a sign of madness in and of itself? Maybe he'd imagined everything up to this point, Dragonborn and all. Maybe he'd caught a serious case of brain-rot. It was certainly preferable to the Madhouse.

"Nah," drawled Sheogorath, with an informality that raked hotly against Eustace's sensibilities. "You're not my type, my dutiful little dullard. One Haskill is enough for me, let me tell you. I'd rather rip me own eyes out. Again!" He barked out a laugh and had the audacity to slap his knee.

"Then," asked Eustace impatiently, turning towards the Daedra, "why are you bloody well here?"

Sheogorath grinned. It was a nasty piece of work, full of pointy, pearly teeth and a piece of lettuce caught between fangs. It was very inhuman, so utterly alien in inflection, and was the sort of thing to inspire terrible poetry. (Something along the lines of "a wailing and gnashing of teeth," Eustace was sure.) The rest of the Prince was similarly shameless: a gaudy, dual-colored suit; pantaloons that were three centuries out of fashion; a dingy, blood-stained cravat; and shaggy, unkempt white hair down to his shoulders, with neither a tie nor headband to keep it out of his cataract-colored eyes.

"I just so happen to be your legal team," said Sheogorath, a touch reprovingly. He crossed his arms and mugged at him, as if he were a child. "Well, mostly. About seventy-two percent of it, maybe, if we negotiate the going rate."

Now, Eustace was a well-bred Nibenese man. At least as much as he pretended to be. (He never much talked about his Gold Coast upbringing if he could help it, and the minute he was old enough he lost the accent and ran for the Imperial City.) He knew very well what a legal team was, what they were for, and why they were necessary for the glory of the Empire. The problem he could not wrap his head around was just exactly _why_ he needed one, presently. The Order of Arkay certainly hadn't mentioned this in their leaflets.

But being a professional coward, Eustace was very good at reading the odds. The odds told him he didn't want to know.

"What trial am I facing, precisely?" he asked suspiciously, taking a precautionary step backward. His foot sunk half-way through the floor. "And for what charges?"

"Oh, you know, the usual." Sheogorath examined his nails nonchalantly. "Theft, arson, assassination, conspiracy, treason, murder, manslaughter, stealing sweetrolls. Oh!" He clapped his hands together, and his eyes took on a gleaming, mirthless sparkle. "And selling your soul to fifteen Daedric Princes, including yours truly. And Malacath. But he doesn't really count, now does he?"

"Ah." There, on the marble floor, was an interesting speck of dust. He headed towards it carefully, glancing at the cackling Prince. "I see. Those are...considerable charges."

"Aren't they?" He seemed more amused than angry. But then he was an odd duck in the river. If he was happy, that meant his fellow Princes were likely chomping at the bit to get at Eustace's soul.

But Eustace was not one to take risks. Indeed, every decision he'd made in his life was focused on the self-preservation of his life and the continuation thereof. The odds on this trial were not in his favor. He might as well do what he did best.

He sank into the floor.

Being a ghost-like creature was bizarre, but not entirely unfamiliar. His favorite Shout, _Feim_ , had operated very much like it. His body, if it could be called such, didn't obey the laws of physics—though Eustace had yet to discover a law he couldn't accidentally break, including the laws of nature and tax evasion—and he found he could levitate a foot off the ground and propel himself forward with his dangling legs. He scrambled as far away from his manor as he could, phasing through walls, pushing through manicured hedges and marble pillars—and goodness, he'd spent his fortune on a number of useless things, hadn't he?—and past that darling draconic fountain and fish pond in the back of the hedge maze, past the treeline that marked the border of his estate, ran as far as a man could run when he neither needed to breathe nor needed to worry about his legs giving out—ran so fast, and so far, that once he finally broke out of his adrenaline-fueled stupor, it was dawn and he was in the middle of a shining red desert, utterly alone.

"I'm somewhere in Hammerfell, aren't I?" he mused. Time had always ran differently for him (that was the problem with technically being a dragon), but this was beyond ridiculous. How long had he been running? Alive, it would have taken him a week with a horse and carriage, and that was a generous estimate.

The sound of someone slurping from a teacup—the sound of which came from his immediate right—had Eustace reeling away. Next to him, sitting in a fine leather armchair underneath a lady's parasol, was Sheogorath. By his side was an older gentleman, balding and wrinkled, dressed in the style of a chamberlain.

"Sounds about right," said Sheogorath, nodding his head in a self-assured manner. His pinky stood high in the air around his teacup. "Give or take a rock or two. What do you think, Haskill?"

"Approximately five thousand paces from the Khajiit settlement of Rimmen," said the gentleman in a long-suffering voice. It was cultured and smooth, with a certain dispassionate underpinning that Eustace had once tried to cultivate in his long years of bureaucracy.

"Hrmph. Never heard of cats living in Hammerfell."

"That is because they do not, my lord," replied Haskill in a bland tone. It was undercut by a pointed look.

"Huh. Well, in any case," said Sheogorath, pitching his teacup deep into the bowels of the empty sands, "we'd better get a move on! Don't want to keep our jury waiting!"

Eustace paled as much as a ghost could. "Jury?"

"It wouldn't be a trial without a captive audience, wouldn't it?" The Madgod stood up and brushed off sand from his rear. "Got to have some excitement for a trial, really ruffle some feathers. Isn't that right, Haskill?"

"Indeed, my lord."

"Time to go, wee mortal!" A large metal bat materialized in Sheogorath's hands. Having been on the short side of a debtor's temper before, Eustace knew well what it meant for his health. He wanted no part of it.

"Wait! Please!" cried Eustace, voice pleading. He raised his hands in supplication. "I—I can explain, if you'd only give me some time—"

"That's what I'm here for!" said Sheogorath, unabashed. He swung on a downstroke, aiming for Eustace's head, but Eustace was an excellent dodger. He rolled out of range.

"Stop! Stop! Lord Sheogorath, I beg of you—"

"Hold! Still!" Each grunt was accompanied by a swing, then a miss. Eustace felt more than saw the bat as it whizzed passed his ear.

"Strike two, my lord," said Haskill mildly, as if he were commenting on the weather.

"Please, listen—"

"Stay!"

"Please, I'm innocent! For certain things!"

There came a cry, his own voice, and then dulled, dimmed pain, coalescing into a mighty headache, and blackness. And then a tunnel, a very long, very deep tunnel. It stretched on seemingly forever. A light was at the end; it twinkled invitingly. From the other side, a voice called out:

"A homerun, I believe it is called, my lord."

And there was lots and lots of cackling.

 

* * *

 

Eustace did not intend to become Dragonborn. In fact, he hadn't the slightest idea what a Dragonborn was until the dragon—Mirmulnir, was it?—had flown at him, yelling obscenities that made his jaw drop. Among other things.

He'd been forced, as it always was the case with him, to do the bidding of an aggressive bully of a woman. That time had been Irileth, whose main characteristics were daggers at the throat, fireballs, and threats shouted to the heavens. All three had been applied liberally with both him and the dragon, though Mirmulnir was lucky enough not to have been formally introduced. Eustace, who had no prior combat experience, had fled inside a crumbled tower for the entirety of the attack, curled up in the fetal position and wondering how he'd been dragged into a suicide mission.

Abruptly, as if hearing his grim thoughts, the stones and mortar had been pulled aside like paper, and a giant red eyeball had peeked within.

Without thinking — but with a very feminine scream — Eustace had shoved a sharp rock into Mirmulnir's eye. He hadn't stop screaming until the only thing left were bones and Irileth slapping him awake.

(The bards had reworked that story a little.)

Afterwards, he'd become the Jarl's rising star: a thane, with an honorary weapon and housecarl, a cheap home in Whiterun, and every important man and woman in the court simpering in his direction. Eustace would have quite happily stayed shut up in Dragonsreach for the rest of his stay in Skyrim—he wasn't, of course, going to remain forever in such savage country, Akatosh preserve him!—if it hadn't been for Irileth and Lydia.

So many of his foes would have paid a substantial fortune to know his one true weakness: controlling, nagging women. The same foes would've laughed themselves ragged (if they didn't suffer severe indignation first) if they'd known how much of the supposedly fearless Dragonborn's deeds were done by pushy underlings. Of all the titles Eustace could legitimately lay claim to, it was two: Alduin's Slayer, which was a bit of an overestimate, really; and honorary member of the Bard's College. He probably would've learned an instrument, too, if Jordis hadn't dragged him back to that bloody mountain.

It seemed every group he joined in Skyrim, whether political or financial or just plain criminal, there was at least one woman who smelled his weakness and took advantage. The Companions held both Aela and Njada, the latter of whom menaced her way into marriage (though she was meek in bed, and thank the gods for that, he would've never survived otherwise); and the Guild had Vex and Karliah—oh, how dearly he hated that wretched key! How everyone carried on about the damned thing; and then Astrid had kidnapped him, she was among the worst of the bunch, and once Cicero came there was the Night Mother—Night Mother? More like _nightmare_ (it turned out a woman didn't need to be alive to work him over); and Mirabelle Ervine had been a real troll, and young Brelyna was merely a very polite brute of a girl.

And if he were being painfully honest, he would admit he still had nightmares about Delphine.

After the debacle with the Brotherhood, he'd run off to Solstheim in the hopes of some reprieve—was it not enough he'd adopted filthy urchins off the street, and all of them daughters? Njada didn't think so, she wanted a real baby put in her, and the thought of a pregnant and hormonal wife sent him fleeing the border—but then Eustace had met towering, overbearing Frea, and then Miraak, and by the end of that chain of poor decisions he'd agreed to Mora's deal just to leave the accursed island. Serana and Valerica had been rather well-mannered people, but in the end they too expected Eustace to be someone he wasn't, and he simply didn't want to deal with the pressure. It didn't help that vampires gave him the creeps, especially when the family patriarch was a little too persistent in trying to catch a nibble.

And then, once the First Emissary for the Thalmor had caught wind of his identity, he'd had to join the Stormcloaks, first thing Morndas. He'd thought it would be nice, living among a mostly male-dominated group -- but then he'd realized soon enough that Ulfric was just as much a woman as any other, with his unrealistic demands, the speeches meant to touch his conscience, and the bloody shouting matches. If he'd wanted to live with a moody Nord, he would've stayed home. But Ulfric had him by the balls, and soon enough he had Skyrim's as well.

Well, Eustace decided one day, if his choices were Elenwen or Ulfric, he'd choose Alduin. A new kalpa would probably be the best thing in the long run, he'd thought. So he packed a knapsack full of invisibility potions, slipped through Skuldafn deep in the night, and marched right to where Alduin was sucking up souls and asked point-blank if he could join the cause.

Alduin...had misunderstood, to put it lightly. Apparently believed Eustace wanted his power all to himself. Dragons were, as poor, ill-fated Paarthurnax once said, accustomed to domination and mindless in-fighting. One didn't just _join_ the World-Eater. Either you were above Him in power, or you submitted your soul after death. There was room for only one Supreme God-King, and that was that. The stupid prophecy didn't help matters.

As it turned out, the best way to kill a god is to simply outnumber Him. And stay out of the way as a horde of the greatest Nord warriors came down from Shor's Hall and beat Him to a divine pulp. Of course, the other Dragonborns had given the honor of the killing blow to their commanding general. (They had charitably thought, bless them, that he'd taken a vow of pacifism and that his screams of terror were rallying cries.)

"Oh, worthy slayer!" Alduin had roared with his last breaths. "I am lost to your power, your Thu'um! I am no match for your strength!"

"Begone, wyrm!" cried Eustace, Sovngarde itself shuddering at his voice. "O Al-Du-In, Bane of Kings, World-Eater, you shall devour no more!"

As he faded to crystalline dust, the World-Eater rumbled with bitter laughter and ascended beyond Time itself.

(Again, the bards had taken some liberties. The actual event was little more than incoherent screams and a dragon vulgarly cursing his parentage.)

Once he'd returned to Skyrim, he decided he'd done everything he possibly could to upset a nation, and had run off with a pile of gold across the border, this time into a crumbling Empire. (He didn't feel too guilty about that, though; after all, the old man had _ordered_ Eustace to kill him, and you can't just ignore an emperor.) Unsurprisingly, land prices had taken a steep dive. He'd bought a good chunk of land, plenty of unquestioning servants whom he paid well (for well-paid servants didn't try to kill you, he naively thought), and kept as far away from women as possible, for nothing good ever came from the so-called fairer sex. And he had made a point not to involve himself in politics ever again.

But politics finds a way to creep up on you—quite literally, in his case. By the time he'd shot up in the middle of the night, eyes drinking in the sight of an impeccably dressed Altmer skulking in the shadows, he realized he felt far too light and far less substantial, his words barely whispers on the wind.

The rest, as they say, was history. Who _they_ are and the worth of their opinion was a question of cynicism. Eustace himself was not optimistic about history. History, he believed, had a way of ending with your soul being auctioned off to the highest bidder.

And as it turned out, he was right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [For your consideration.](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/xc1s7/what_happens_to_the_dragonborns_soul_when_she/c5ld2v9/)


	2. I AM

**II.**

"C'mon, buddy, get up," said a voice. A wet _thing_ touched the shell of his ear. "Don't make me lick you."

Eustace woke quickly at that. He found himself sitting upright in a chair, his neck throbbing from how he slept. He blinked the grogginess away.

The room he sat in was Imperial in style: pristine marble covered in mosaics of precious stones, and columns upon columns standing proudly in straight rows. Sunlight streamed in from stained glass windows, bathing the white and gold in a spectrum of colors. Overhead were the vaulted ceilings of a dome, similar in style to the White-Gold Tower. He was sat in a heavy wooden chair on a raised dais, set above a gilded staircase; a red rug ran the length from his chair to the end of the square hall, where on the other side stood another raised dais. What drew the eye was not the empty judge's stand — though it was very large and carved ornately from a dark crystal — but the beings sitting semi-circle around the stand: Eustace recognized each one from the books he'd read as a young child.

The Daedric Princes. Every last one of them.

"Buck up, bud," said the same voice, and Eustace looked towards it. And he shrieked.

It was a monster of a dog, mangy and unkempt, that spoke to him. The hound was roughly the size of a horse, its snout right above his ear. Its fur was dappled in an array of unnatural colors, with vivid reds and lichen-green the most noteworthy, spattered over the usual black and brown. But it was the pitch-black eyes, all seven of them, that gave him pause—and then the pointed, Mer-like ears, and the curved horns protruding out the front of its skull, and the sharp, elongated mouth with blunted, Mannish teeth. Really, it was hard to choose what unnerved him the most.

"Hey now," said Barbas sharply. "Don't freak out on me."

"You've...changed," said Eustace weakly. He held a hand over his racing heart. It was a good thing he was already dead, or else the shock would have killed him.

The dog brightened. "You like it? Wanted to dress up for the big event."

"Dress up?" asked Eustace faintly.

"Right, right, you don't know. But yeah, let's just say this's been the most exciting thing happening outside Nirn for us. Involving mortal souls, at least."

"Ah." He didn't know what to say.

"Yeah, I think I look pretty good too," said Barbas. He winked with three eyes. "But just wanted to tell you, I wanna wish you luck, pal. Thought you could use it. And a wake-me-up."

"Thank you," said Eustace in a weary voice. He glanced at the Princes. "I believe I might need it."

"Ha, you're tellin' me." Barbas snorted. It was comfortingly dog-like. "Don't know how you did it. Alla them? You couldn't settle for just one?"

"It wasn't my fault!" hissed Eustace, voice desperate. "I didn't know I was selling my soul!"

"Then why'd you bother with the Princes in the first place?"

"Because! Because — because I, er..." He trailed off.

Barbas looked disbelieving. "You don't even know why, do you?"

Eustace didn't answer, for there was none to give. After a meaningful pause, Barbas wished him all the best, to not worry, every mortal makes terrible life choices, at least you had some fun, and ran off to the other side of the court room. His master, Clavicus Vile, was at least much less intimidating in his current form than when Eustace had met him trapped in a tall, forbidding statue. He was just as vile as his name, with a child-like body connected to the demonic, mischievous face of an imp, his iconic mask draped atop his forehead. His sour expression only grew worse when Barbas joined his side. They put their heads together and began a heated, whispered conversation.

Taking a deep breath, Eustace looked to the other Princes.

How does a mortal describe the divine? As it happened, the same way one describes a mortal. For all sixteen, excluding a suspiciously missing Sheogorath, appeared as such. It was obvious which was which, for apparently gods didn't require imagination so much as power. For Eustace it was like looking through heavy-handed religious iconography.

It was one being in particular, however, that drew his eye first — and ironically at that, considering what she did for a living. There, on the far left, was a pale woman covered in a dark black robe—so dark, the light from the windows couldn't decipher the original color. The silhouette of a raven sat on her shoulder, almost indistinguishable from the black it stood on; Eustace thought it might be staring at him, but he couldn't tell since it didn't have eyes. In fact, the woman herself had the same problem: the top of her face was withdrawn into the shadows, yet Eustace could feel her dark gaze probing his body.

Eustace's breathing hitched. Oh, splendid—Nocturnal was looking at him. It was the bloody key, that damned bloody key all over again! He hastily looked away from her.

The rest of the attendants were isolated in their manner, islands of power in a strained archipelago. Nearly hidden in a crevice close to Nocturnal was an amorphous blob of green and brown, similar to the contents of a sweltering sewer, with skittering legs oozing from its mass; a mask-like face peered out from the depths, its pupil-less eyes rolling along the edges, unconcerned with its neighbors. On the far right was the exact opposite: A nearly invisible female figure sat regally on her chair, her garments faintly outlined by the bright light shining from her center. She radiated a sort of pristine impeccability, which suited her straight, trim posture.

Next to Meridia was a rotund red imp, or perhaps a large scamp, who lazed back in his seat and covered his eyes from the light. He was dressed in exquisite, though ruined robes, the velvet embroidered with vines and roses. The fur trimmings looked as though covered in spilt wine. He had the air of a man hungover after a long drinking spell.

On Sanguine's other side was a serpent the size of an adolescent. Its tongue darted out every moment or so, tasting the air, its head winding back and forth in time with its tail. Eustace thought it might have been attempting something more impressive, like a dragon or a large snake, but had only a child's drawing as reference. Its bat-like wings fluttered, though it stayed wound around its seat.

By Clavicus Vile and Barbas was a tall old hag, her face ancient and sown with lines upon lines, the last scraggly patch of white hair pulled back in a top-knot. Her long hooked nose was pulled back haughtily in a sneer. From the way she held herself, she seemed both grand and spindly, her purple robes loosely covering her boney frame. With a burst of guilt Eustace recognized the staff she held in her left hand: a wooden staff with an engraved skull strapped to the end. He had held its exact likeness once.

Beside Vaermina was an alarming union of beast and man. It was certainly a man from his bare chest and neck, but hiding his face was a deer skull and headdress. His arms were furry from shoulder to forearm, ending in unnatural claws. His legs were vulpine in form; he'd forgone sitting for standing, his stance wide and firm. The twin pinpricks of light in the skull's bare eye sockets sought Eustace's eyes and found them quickly. Eustace swallowed nervously; Hircine had his spear, as always, but this time there were human skulls wrapped around the pointy end.

Looking for a friendlier face led Eustace to an even more unwelcoming one: that of Malacath — and there was no doubt about it, from the thick green skin and Orc-like figure to the pearlescent tusks and flat, wrinkled nose — whom sat with crossed arms between Namira and Nocturnal, looking as though he were prepared for war. He was a little further off compared to his neighbors, separated and seemingly removed from his fellow Princes. He looked off into the distance and kept his eyes forward, indifferent to both Eustace and his surroundings.

But then Eustace's eyes, as if punishing his optimistic thoughts, were drawn closer to the center of the crowd, towards the stand. There, eight arms positioned carefully in her lap — or _his_ , or _its_ ; did it matter with this Prince? — was Mephala the Webspinner. Her skin was black and seemed thin, a matte color that deflected light, and her eight eyes were red and dark. Where her legs should have been were the spinnerets and pedepalps of a spider, spinning silk wildly into what seemed to be a Cat's Cradle. Only one eye was focused on Eustace; the other seven were swiveled in every possible direction, like a thief in a jewelry shop.

Beside Mephala were two similar figures, both of grey skin and red eyes. Like the Dunmer they aligned with, Boethiah and Azura appeared elf-like, slimmer than Men, with sharp ears and ridged temples. Their similarities, however, ended at the surface. Azura was dressed in a simple chiton robe, a dusky purple, and held a wreath of dark roses atop her dark chignon; Boethiah, in contrast, wore a golden breastplate under his elaborate black lacerna, his white hair pulled back in a top-knot. Azura sat placidly in her chair, hands demure in her lap; Boethiah perched on the edge of his, vulgarly spreading his legs without a care for propriety. Eustace, watching the three Princes together, wondered briefly if declaring allegiance to the Dunmeri pantheon would get him out of this scrape, but then thought better on it. Though they aligned on occasion, they didn't seem the types to share.

Mehrunes Dagon was at least familiar to him, as he was to every knowledgeable Imperial. He was, after all, the ever-persistent enemy of the Empire, with quite a number of plots against the Septim line, not including the eventual assassinations of every one of its blood heirs. He wasn't a Prince known to change appearance; he kept it simple, with red skin, a fanged mouth, four arms, a brawny build, and naught but a loincloth. Compared to the other Princes, he was downright plain. But his glowing yellow eyes and his massive size were deterrents enough. Eustace averted his eyes.

The last two Princes were seated on either side of the judge's stand. The King of Rape, Molag Bal, was fittingly scaled and reptilian, as if he'd torn apart and then reconstructed the corpses of several dragons to create his form. Like Dagon, he was large — they were supposedly brothers — and his eyes glowed; but unlike Dagon's warm coloring, he was cold and icy, the shade of skin that comes from asphyxiation or frostbite. He did not sit, nor stand. Rather, he appeared to fill the air like the darkness does when a candle's flame dims.

And then there was the last. He was stranger than the others, separate and distinct. His was the primordial ooze that floods the void. His were the reaching hands that appeared from out of the dark. His was the unblinking gaze of the alchemist who plucks, one by one, the wings from a moth — not for sadism's sake, but that of indiscriminate curiosity. Hermaeus Mora, kin of Mephala, who hoarded knowledge and coveted secrets — the alien, the wheedling, the probing. This Prince had not a distinguishable body, but a vortex of eyes and tentacles reaching out of the black. He existed beyond a mortal figure, and apparently didn't care to play his part in this crude theater piece.

"Lively bunch, eh?"

Eustace was startled out of his macabre thoughts. Sheogorath had appeared from out of thin air at some point or another, trailed by his chamberlain, and stood off to Eustace's side. He was alarmingly, uncomfortably close, his nose nearly touching Eustace's temple. His crossed eyes were focused on Eustace's sweaty cheek.

Eustace took in a deep breath and swallowed down his stomach.

Sheogorath smiled and then pulled away. "Now, now, little dragonling. The big bad monsters shan't violate you while Ol' Knocker's knocking!" He rapped a fist against his temple rather smartly, then turned away and barked, "Haskill! Do you have my whassits ready?"

Without hesitation the chamberlain produced a large leather briefcase from behind his back. In his other hand he held a hefty folder that was signed, in a swirly, ostentatious script, PERJURY.

Sheogorath cackled and rubbed his hands together. "Ah, wonderful! Wonderful!" he cried. He snatched the briefcase and folder from his chamberlain and then weighed them in his hands, as if he were a scale. Apparently finding them of satisfactory weight, he handed the files back to Haskill and then dropped the briefcase to the floor. It made a deafening _bang_ as it landed, and with a sharp snapping sound it blew itself open in a whirlwind of dust.

The dust set off Eustace's lungs into a coughing fit; when he finally could open his teary eyes, he found, to his mounting panic, a long wooden desk set up along their side of the building. Sitting rather primly at the desk were the figures of a bedraggled Bosmer man curled up on his chair, gibbering incoherently about some sort of punishment; a dozing, drooling Argonian dressed in peasant's clothes, who clutched a two-pronged fork in his tail; and a colorful, delicate bird that twittered on and on as it pecked stupidly at the wood.

It took a long personal moment before Eustace could finally say, "Who — _what_ are they?"

From where he stood perusing the file, Sheogorath looked up at him. A pair of monocles had materialized from nowhere and were now perched in the air just a few inches from his blind eyes. Following Eustace's shaking finger, he glanced over the table; then, rolling his eyes, he said, "Assorted interns, obviously."

The sweat creeping down Eustace's body was threatening to drown him. "One of them is a bird!"

Sheogorath did a double-take, as if surprised by this information. He squinted at the oblivious creature, considering, before his countenance grew brighter in childish delight. Laughing, he lifted a hand to the bird and whistled; it alighted and plopped down rather gracelessly onto his forefinger.

"Ah, yes, what a good little wretch," he cooed, stroking its blunt beak. Then, without a care, he swiveled to the Princes, raised the bird high into the air, and cried, "Ha-ha! Looky looky!"

There was a flash of silver, a sickening wet _thud_ , and when Eustace turned around, he found Sheogorath's head pierced through by a spear.

The sight was ghastly. Sheogorath had been impaled with such force, his face was turned inward like a whirlpool. His monocles were merged with his cheeks and nose; his eyebrows, raised in smug appraisal, looked more like bookends surrounding a red, fleshy book. His skull had become a gory perch, and the bird seemed to agree with this assessment as it landed on the end of the spear.

Eustace could only gape in horror. He looked back to where the spear had come from and found Hircine, Prince of the Hunt, standing apart from the other Princes, his hands empty, the glowing eyes within his headdress flashing wildly.

Without a word, Haskill appeared at his side. "You will find," said Haskill, snapping Eustace's open mouth closed with a finger, "that my lord has a number of enemies among his fellow Princes."

Eustace blinked at him. When he spun around to inspect his self-appointed attorney, he found (and was not surprised) that Sheogorath was whole and hale, and was now proudly displaying his bird to any and all who would look. The spear was gone, and when investigated, Eustace found it within Hircine's hands. Hircine himself was once again back in line, as if nothing had ever happened. The rest of the Princes did not seem to notice or care about their little altercation, excepting perhaps the cool gazes of Nocturnal and Mephala.

He turned back to the other two of his defense. The Bosmer, whom Eustace suddenly remembered as that strange little peasant from Solitude's back alleys, was rifling through a set of blank papers set in front of him. He was reading them aloud in a nervous, sing-song voice, his emaciated frame trembling in bobbed time to his words. The Argonian, in contrast, was still entirely unaware of the world around him as he grunted in his sleep.

He tried rubbing his eyes out, but the picture seemed, indeed, to worsen with every glimpse. "Are they truly...part of my counsel?" he asked Haskill.

Haskill's face did not change. "Of course."

"Of course," echoed Eustace with a sigh. "Of course, it is. A mental patient, a bird, a sleeping lizard-man and his fork. Yes, yes, perfect." He swiped a hand down his face. "This will work out just wonderfully."

"No doubt," said Haskill without a trace of humor. "My lord has experience defending murderers in court."

" _I am not—!_ " He stopped himself when he heard the rest. "He has _experience?_ "

"Why, yes indeed!" Sheogorath chimed in, clapping a hand on Eustace's shoulder. He shoved Eustace unceremoniously back into his seat. "And I'll have you know, my client won! Though I suppose," he added with a speculative gleam, "that he also lost as well. Duality, you see. Arrogant little upstart, that hermaphroditic poet, but, _oh!_ — He knew his way around a spear!" He sighed wistfully. "Quite the affair, and I was rather sad I happened to miss it."

Eustace stared in disbelief.

"Now," Sheogorath said, turning his back. "Hmm. Haskill, are we settled on our side?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Goody. Let's see, we've got the papers, the interns, the guilty client, the complaintiffs...What else, what else..." He glanced around the room, scratching his beard. With a snap of his fingers, he pointed towards the dais. "Aha! We need a puffed-up, gavel-girding judge to round out the circus! Now, I wonder who our delightful death-dealers chose to —"

As if the words were the correct signal, a dimness of light wound down around the whole of the room. Sheogorath let out a delighted little shout, but surprisngly he kept himself quiet as a sort of otherworldly glow took on the dais. It was as if a spotlight, or magelight, were focused on the judge's stand. The Princes did not seem to mind this intrusion, except perhaps for the strange scuttling dance Namira made at the light, and the way Nocturnal seemed to flicker a little further away.

Sanguine was the one, surprisingly, who stood up from his seat, although the motion was made with great reluctance. He held the air of a man who did not want to speak in front of a crowd but had, unfortunately, drawn the shortest straw. A staff appeared in his right hand — the Sanguine Rose, Eustace recognized with some revulsion — and he tapped it on the marble floor twice.

"We of the Realms of Oblivion," said Sanguine, slurring his words a little, "have gathered to ruminate on the mortal soul of the Dragonborn, last of his kind, called upon by, by many titles —" and here he swayed, and it was only by his hand on the staff that kept his corpulence afloat "— and the court will not list them all, so don't bother asking — in view of all present and affected parties, to decide who amongst us will hereby claim, and under the powers that bind this ritual, and pre-agreed upon by all present, with full respect to proceedings, as decided by the results of the court —"

"Get on with it!" shouted Sheogorath, waving a fist.

Sanguine half-heartedly glared, and then sighed. "Fine, how about this? Everyone who thinks they should get a piece of the mortal Dragonborn's soul, say so."

A ripple of thunder shook the hall, and Eustace made out sounds and noises that seemed like assent to this notion, from the hisses and chitterings of Namira and Peryite, to the shows of subtle vibration from Azura and Hermaeus Mora. It was Sheogorath's enthusiastic yell of agreement that made Eustace pause.

"I thought you said you had no interest in my soul!" Eustace cried indignantly, pushing himself to his feet. But as he stood, a mysterious, invisible force pushed him back into his seat.

"Ah-ah!" said Sheogorath, shaking a finger. "I never said I wasn't after your soul, dearie!"

"You represent me! This is against your interests!"

"My interests," he said in a menacing voice, halting Eustace in his tracks, "are not the concerns of petty mortality, now are they?" There was a sharp, dangerous cut to his figure; and, without realizing it, Eustace obediently settled down. "That's more like it!" he said cheerfully. "Think about it this way: I've got a vested interest in keeping all these rakes away from your tender flesh. When it's my turn, you can run behind whoever's skirts will save your rump from me!"

"I suppose..."

"If you're quite done," said Sanguine wryly. It seemed whatever had been ailing him was wearing off, and he seemed at least less hung-over. "All right. All those who don't prefer this mortal's soul, you may say so."

There was a deafening silence. That was perhaps the worst part of it, that truly chilled him.

"Well then," said Sanguine. He scraped back his scalp and then whistled. "Well then, seventeen claims. This will be interesting. All right, then. Let's call upon the court-appointed arbiter, shall we?"

"Arbiter?" asked Eustace nervously. The arbiters he knew in life had all been older, dour men, usually of aristocratic stock, whom played the role for the serfs they ruled over.

"Can't have a judge, as that presumes that a certain someone is above us," sniffed Sheogorath. "Certainly not when it's a _mortal_." He said the last word with a small _harrumph_.

"A mortal?"

"I'm bored," said Sheogorath plainly. He examined his nails. "Haskill, you tell him."

Haskill smoothly took over. "The arbiter will mediate this assembly and decide who amongst the Princes is the most suitable for your soul. The arbiter will be a mortal, for you are a mortal yourself; they will also share a strong affiliation, and their spirit will resemble yours, as this was recognized as the most civil manner. They will also have a connection to your mortal life, as you lived and breathed within the mortal plane."

"They...will be someone I know?" asked Eustace, feeling a hole open up in the pit of his stomach. There hadn't been many good connections between himself and others in his past.

"Indubitably," Haskill replied. "Most likely, in fact, someone related by blood-bonds."

"But I don't have any living..." Eustace froze, and what little color he had retained retreated deep within the bowels of his heart.

Oh no.

Oh — by merciful Stendarr — _no_.

"They couldn't have," he whispered to himself. It seemed once again his body was rebelling — his dead heart was racing, bashing itself against his chest in a last-ditch effort to free itself. He made to do the same, to jump out of his chair and run, nevermind the seventeen reminders why that would be the worst possible ending for him — but the force or magic keeping him in place was strong. It buckled only slightly under his desperate flailing. The more he fought, it seemed, the more resilient the force grew.

"Release me!" he growled. A bit of the Thu'um seeped into his tone. His voice rattled the floor and windows and made even the Argonian stir a little in his sleep.

Apparently whatever had made Sheogorath relatively pleasant had worn off. Even his hair seemed to darken as he watched Eustace squirm wildly in place. "Oh?" he asked, his brogue drifting into a courtly, polished accent. "And why should I do that?"

Sanguine continued on blithely, without regard to the other side of the room: "And our arbiter, as it pleases all of the court, has been brought in —"

"Don't you see? _She's_ coming! Let me out, let me out!" He kicked out with his legs, but couldn't get a foothold. "Release me at _once!_ "

Sheogorath didn't move a muscle. His pale eyes grew into golden, demonic things. "Don't you think it's about time you stopped running?"

"Not with her! Never with her!"

Sheogorath grinned. It was incredibly plain compared to his demented leers. There was no lettuce, no fangs, nothing odd about it should just anyone catch sight. But that didn't matter, for it was all said within his slit-eyed gaze: Within the depths of his eyes, if one cared to search, was an immeasurable amount of sheer contempt, of bald-faced disgust, of such boundless antipathy for everything that made up Eustace's being, the Prince of Madness appeared not so much a god than a mortal man. It left Eustace gasping for breath, and it was only when the clout of Sheogorath's gaze lifted that he felt lighter.

"The court-appointed arbiter," said Sanguine, clearing his throat, "Audhild Olvirdson, blood-kin of Helgi Olvirdson, last of their line, will now, by the grace of this Court, take to the stand." He careened back and forth, shook his head, then waved his hand to the dais. "You can go ahead now."

And without much ado, a small stooping figure appeared on the dais, sitting on a chair similar to Eustace's own. He pushed deeper into his seat, as if the child hidden within were clawing its way out through his spine; and indeed, he fiercely wished he could jump out of skin and vanish from sight.

His reaction was perfectly understandable. After all, how often was one confronted by the soul of their dead mother?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This isn't, surprisingly, the first time Sheogorath was a defense attorney.](https://www.imperial-library.info/content/trial-vivec)
> 
> [Meet the Daedra.](https://www.imperial-library.info/content/imperial-census-daedra-lords) I used a mix of their _Daggerfall_ , _Skyrim_ , and my own ideas for their appearances.

**Author's Note:**

> [For your consideration.](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/xc1s7/what_happens_to_the_dragonborns_soul_when_she/c5ld2v9/)


End file.
